(I've already stood up for Walter Koenig in another thread.)
After the stellar (Trekker?) virtues of WRATH OF KHAN, I expected UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY to be better than I found it to be. Just two thoughts:
1) Khan's Melville references added drama and literacy to WRATH. The blowhard's continuous Shakespearean palaver here in COUNTRY by contrast are merely tiresome, the more so as the film wears on. By the time McCoy said he'd pay good money to have the guy shut up, I was ready to start up a collection.
2) If you're going to have a "Whodunnit" mystery in your story, it behooves you to provide more than just one possible suspect.
The way I remember it, and I admit I haven't seen it since it first came out, somebody had to be a traitor, and the one who turned out to be that villain was the only new member of the old Enterprise crew, so who else could it have been? Anyhow, that's the way it hit me at the time...
I can't recall a single good acting scene from the series or films done by Koenig. I don't know his work outside the franchise, but after two season and seven films, I'd find it hard to beleive he could act in anything else, otherwise it would have rubbed off eventually into a Trek episosde or even the films a decade later, spread over a decade themselves. The same pretty much goes for Takei as well.
I've seen some of the other leads in other projects and they can act. But off hand I think the best performance was by a TOS actor was by DeForest, oddly enough on The Final Frontier, when he is re-experiencing his father's death and then the look on his face and delivery to them about it. Unfortunately it's sucked to death by Sybok moments later.
The way I remember it, and I admit I haven't seen it since it first came out, somebody had to be a traitor, and the one who turned out to be that villain was the only new member of the old Enterprise crew, so who else could it have been? Anyhow, that's the way it hit me at the time...
Two space-suit disguised figures on the Enterprise beam over to the Klingon ship and kill the Chancellor and anyone in their way. Those two crewman, in turn, are found dead. It also appears the Enterprise fired on the ship. Spock is preparing to hand over the reins to Valeris, and she has no apparent motives (unless one suspects she's really a Romulan instead of a righteous, honest Vulcan). Kirk and McCoy on the prison planet are told by the shapeshifter chick there is someone who wants to kill them. You dont really know what's going on and why, and there's too many machinations to think that a single person is orchestrating it (because there isnt). That's why it's more of a conspiracy thriller, not a whodunit. The ploy in sickbay to lure the crewmen's killer isnt the end of the story. If you ignore most of the movie by reducing it to "who killed the crewmen?" among the prominent characters, then you're correct, it does follow "the villain is really the nice guy from the first reel" protocol.
I love the film! I remember my mom and I went on opening day and the theater was packed! We loved the film, it had a good mystery with great character moments, great character interactions and a great exciting space battle at the end! My mom bought me the Laserdisc the day it came out too.
Continuing my re-evaluation of the Trek movies, we come to the last movie featurepingnthe full original cast.
Have to say I'm not a huge fan. For starters, after the excellent location work in the previous two movies, we are now back to another studio-bound movie. Apart from a few quick shots from the second unit on the ice planet, every single scene looks obviously like the backlog on which it was shot.
The story itself is actually pretty good, but it is ruined by some quite abysmal dialogue - if you thought the Melville quotes in Trek II were bad, this is 10 times worse.
Shatner is as ever great and ai like that McCoy is front and centre in this one too. But contrasting their acting is the quite terrible Kim Cattrell (who is usually very watchable but is totally miscast here). In a part which is so obviously Saavik-lite, Valeris is just an abysmal character played without any conviction at all, and badly acted to boot.
Talking of boots and bad acting, kudos to Walter Koenig who, after five previous films of amateur acting, manages to plumb new depths of ineptitude in his performance. His "if the boot fits" scene is so embarrassingly bad, it would have been cut from a kid's fan movie (it isn't helped by the fact that the sticky patch for the gravity boot to stick on against the locker door couldn't be more obvious if it was painted fluorescent green with the words "look! Cheap practical effect coming here!!!").
Add to all of this a score which is unspectacular and derivative and some quite shockingly bad direction from Nick Meyer and you have a Trek film that really is rather average.
Don't forget that scene in the Galley, when the cast all have their screen time.
Well, I think that was actually better than the no attempt whatsoever "acting" scene from TFF when he is in the captain's chair talking to Sybok, "No, wait."
7 movies and Koenig's performances were always utterly terrible. So many scenes to pick from to highlight his lack of talent, not a single frame that counters that argument.
We're it not for the fact that Koenig fitted the casting requirements for season 2 of TOS (young, Beetles-like) then surely his career would have been limited to commercials for Preparation-H and the like. Although painful though his performances are, I doubt he could have convincingly portrayed someone with haemeroids.
Have you forgotten his stellar performance in MoonTrap?
I love the film! I remember my mom and I went on opening day and the theater was packed! We loved the film, it had a good mystery with great character moments, great character interactions and a great exciting space battle at the end! My mom bought me the Laserdisc the day it came out too.
Well, that's all that really matters, so now the thread can be locked for all eternity.
I love the film! I remember my mom and I went on opening day and the theater was packed! We loved the film, it had a good mystery with great character moments, great character interactions and a great exciting space battle at the end! My mom bought me the Laserdisc the day it came out too.
Well, that's all that really matters, so now the thread can be locked for all eternity.
I didn't mean to annoy you, I just wanted to get the point across that I love the film.
You said something similar afew posts back, which is fine, but why no specific observations or comments for discussion this time? Surely you've wondered if Chris Plummer spinning around in his chair was a reference to Julie Andrews at the start of "Sound of Music."
You said something similar afew posts back, which is fine, but why no specific observations or comments for discussion?
Yeah you're right. One of the things I love about the film is near the end when it went back and forth between the Khitomer conference and Spock and McCoy with the torpedo, the editing and tension is fantastic! The films also starts out with a bang literally with the explosion from Praxis. Even the credits were cool with all the signatures. I think I like the film as much as TWOK.
Have you forgotten his stellar performance in MoonTrap?
As someone who loves a good-bad movie, Moontrap is absolute dreck. Theres a scene with Bruce Campbell at a bar that literally looks like they shot it for the price of the beer he's drinking. The whole thing is on YouTube, I think - its incredibly bad, top to bottom.
Have you forgotten his stellar performance in MoonTrap?
As someone who loves a good-bad movie, Moontrap is absolute dreck. Theres a scene with Bruce Campbell at a bar that literally looks like they shot it for the price of the beer he's drinking. The whole thing is on YouTube, I think - its incredibly bad, top to bottom.
The company that released it in the UK were at convention Mike Jenner and I were at, trying to sell it to the audience. We both knew then it was going to be crap.
This was never my favorite of the films and is kind of a mess. There's a great story in there and some wonderful performances. However, this is looked at so highly, I'm convinced, because it was seen as a better close to the original cast than Star Trek V.
This film looks cheap in a way it shouldn't. The recycled Next Generation sets are obvious. It was filmed on the run, they had only 18 months when they green-lit the film to get it in for the 25th anniversary, then it was cancelled during a budget dispute. When new studio management came in, they gave Meyer his budget and went back to work after losing weeks if not months. So it's a huge rush job where plot holes slip though (both Excelsior and Enterprise were cataloging gaseous anomolies? Valeris knew Kirk said "let them die" to Spock after the classified briefing?).
My biggest problem is with Nick Meyer. He was absolutely smoking his own publicity at this point. He leans hard on the Shakespeare and makes the Enterprise more "nautical" than ever ("right standard rudder"). He gives the Klingons a Neutral Zone where that was always a Romulan thing (the movies had a habit of mixing them up beginning with TWOK). They make it seem as if Starfleet exists only to counter the Klingon threat. Even when the C&C pooh-pooh's the notion of "mothballing the starfleet" he doesn't mention Romulans, Andorians, Tholians or the idea of any other hostile race. Did anyone really suggest dismantling our US Armed Forces because the Cold War ended? Meyer pretty much made this his pet project with little to no regard to the previous world building.
Worse, his direction is sloppy and over the top. He overcrowds the sets with extras in cadet uniforms (with name tags!), they all over emote to every little thing: check out the guy with his mouth hung open as Scotty smiles while the Enterprise leaves spacedock. The "uniform search" sequence is ridiculously overbaked, with dozens of people searching one room and a guy with goggles and a muffin pan on a stick saying "coming through! Coming through!"
While the music and the assassination want you to think this film is "dark," it's played for laughs far too often. Chekov: remember the Ensign who was brilliant and following in Spock's footsteps? Khan must have sucked his brain dry because he's been assigned the position of Ship's Idiot. The "dozens of books" scene where Uhura has to talk to a Klingon listening outpost? Jeez, really? The alien whose genitals are where our knees would be...with a gaping hole in his pants so we can see them. Does it make sense that he'd cover everying except his balls?
The one thing that will always bug me was the Kirk vs Kirk scene. Oh, it's great, very classic Trek except for this bit:
Kirk: "I can't believe I kissed you!" Martia as Kirk: "It must've been your lifelong ambition!"
Always gets a laugh but it's not about KIRK, it's about SHATNER. It's too meta. Kirk never had the self inflated ego, it was Shatner. Not only that, Shatner's delivery of both lines are awful, with weird facial tics and don't match the VERY serious shots before or after.
So, yeah, it's a good story and has a nice send off but it really isn't a "good movie." The Star Trek Films worked best for me when they weren't vanity projects with agendas. Trek's 4, 5 and 6 are my least favorite of the classics mainly because the studio demanded humor and the top billed stars had too much creative control.
As for the supporting cast, I think people are a little hard on them. Other than Chekov in TWOK, they never had more than a token handful of lines, less work than they did on the TV series. I thought they were more than decent actors, but with so little to do, what's to rehearse? And nobody could have made Chekov's dialog in Trek 6 any better. He was made to look like an idiot in the Crewman Dax scene meanwhile they were all assholes for not checking his file and knowing the guy won't fit in boots. I mean, if they knew him without checkingm then they'd know his species. If they didn't know him, they'd logically check to see who he was. And really...you gather 18 people to gang up on him? Why not just Spock, Chekov and two security people?
God this movie sucks worse the more I think about it. I think it and V maybe the two worst written films in the original 6.
Scott, quit pussyfooting around and say what your really think. Maybe you should put it in spoilers before Henry reads it and needs a defibrillator. Or before you need one. Btw, how many times have you seen the movie?
And I thought the only thing wrong was Uhura's anachronistic comment, "The thing has gotta have a tailpipe."
